Aditi Ramesh
PROFILE OF THE WEEK

Aditi Ramesh

Aditi’s voice is a spellbinding. Soft-spoken, unpretentious, wide-eyed with the voice of a soulful songstress, the twenty-seven-year-old creates music that is sensitive, intimate and relatable. It’s just been a few months since she started making music and the industry hasn’t particularly been very kind to her—she thinks that is because she has absolutely no roots in the music scene. The world is often unkind to such people but the fact of the matter is that a great artist can come from anywhere. 

At five, Aditi gave her vocal chords a go by taking Carnatic vocal lessons and western classical piano which became her life up until the age of 15. Tables turned, she quit music, enrolled herself into a law school and was a lawyer for close to three years. ‘I knew that if I wasn’t doing something with music, I wasn’t happy’, she says. So she moved out of a full time gig as a lawyer and started making music. Now Aditi starts her day with musicians from Ladies Compartment before she heads to the day job as a legal consultant—this is in order to make rent on her upper suburbs apartment, which she shares with two flatmates. The latter part of the day is usually booked for recordings/gigs or jamming sessions.

Her debut extended play, Autocorrect is very personal to her. Personal experiences/stories sketch the contours of her tracks. It’s the first cohesive set of songs Aditi has written and the first time she was in a studio to record her music was for this particular album. The first song, Efflux of Time is about her state of mind when she was just tired of juggling work with music. ‘I was running around balancing full time work and music, wasn't yet earning well and money was tight, my folks wondered what on earth I was doing and at times. I felt I was going to explode. Efflux of Time is a legal term, but it defines something I find poetic.’ The track also serves as an opener to the EP as it relies heavily on vocal harmony with very minimal synths. ‘The second track, Stuff on Our Minds is loosely inspired by life in my law firm and talks about how people feel the need to turn to alcohol and drugs to lose their senses and deal with life but it’s just because they've got things on their minds. The third track, Marriageable Age talks about societal pressures in India for girls to get married once they've crossed a certain age. The final track, Small Fish in a Big Pond is my personal experience as a new artist in the music industry. The song shows a certain vulnerability which is apparent from the vocals.’

In the past year, this powerhouse has played over 50 gigs, in eight cities across the country including NH 7 Weekender, Pune, started the all-female band Ladies Compartment, put out her debut EP (Autocorrect) and a single post the EP, toured the EP in six cities, judged college singing competitions and composed music for a short film. She is a part of four bands which includes her own, gradually expanding into a larger Aditi Ramesh ensemble, Ladies Compartment, jazz-fusion band Jazztronaut. And she has most recently joined the already established acapella and beatbox ensemble Voctronica. 

Text Hansika Lohani Mehtani